What happens when we combine brioche and garter stitches? Checkered brioche – a stitch that is highly-textured and squishy while also sturdy and easy to knit. Oh. and there is no purling involved
Just as it is the case with the honeycomb brioche stitch, the fabric formed by checkered brioche does not look the same on both sides.
When we use this stitch to make blankets and scarves, each side will have its own distinguished look. It adds more interest to the project, but it doesn’t make it reversible.
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That’s why it seems that this gorgeous stitch pattern works best for warm squishy hats, sweaters, cardigans and other projects that show only the right side of the fabric.
With a simple 2-stitch 4-row pattern like this one, even newer knitters will be able to make beautiful trendy hand knits.
Here’s how checkered brioche is built row by row.
Cast on an even number of stitches. This stitch pattern forms a nicely relaxed and elastic fabric, and methods that result in sturdy cast on edges (like long-tail, knitted or cable cast on, for example) help to keep the fabric in shape.
If you are after a relaxed edge, use a more elastic cast on method, like double chain cast on.
To make the initial set of stitches for my swatch, I used the slingshot version of the long-tail cast on method.
Because in the first and the third rows of the pattern, we’ll add yarn overs to the very first or the very last stitchesof a row, we’ll use two of the stitches that we’ve just cast on as selvedges. These stitches will form neat side edges, and they will keep the yarn overs safe.
You can use any method you like to work those selvedges, but to make this stitch pattern purl-free, I’ll use the Silesian selvedges method and knit the first stitch of every row through the back loop while slipping the last stitch of every row purlwise with the yarn in front of the work.
With all these little things in mind, we are ready to knit some beautiful squishy checkered brioche fabric.
ROW 1 – WRONG SIDE
Knit the first stitch of the row through the back loop. This is our first selvedge stitch.
1.1. Bring the working yarn to the front of the work, then move it over the top and to the back of the right needle to make a regular yarn over.
1.2. With the yarn at the back of the work, insert the tip of the right needle into the next stitch from right to left.
Ease the left needle out, slipping this stitch purlwise to the right needle.
1.3. Knit one stitch.
Repeat steps 1.1 through 1.3 until you get to the last stitch of the row.
This is our second selvedge stitch, so we bring the yarn to the front of the work and repeat step 1.3 to slip this stitch purlwise to the right needle.
Because we added so many yarn overs to the work, now we have more stitches on the needles than the number of stitches that we cast on. It is perfectly fine. We’ll take care of these extra stitches in the next row.
ROW 2 – RIGHT SIDE
Knit the first stitch through the back loop.
2.1. Knit one stitch.
2.2. Next comes a pair of a stitch + a yarn over. We are going to treat this duo as one stitch and knit these two strands together.
Repeat steps 2.1 and 2.2 to the last stitch of this row.
Bring the yarn to the front of the work and slip the last stitch purlwise to the right needle.
As you see, this row is very easy – basically, we knit all stitches, but we remember to treat the stitch + yarn over duos as one stitch.
The number of stitches is back to the number we had before we worked the first row of the pattern repeat. If you look closely at the stitches that we formed, you will see that the yarn overs added a lot of texture to every other stitch of the fabric.
To make a checkered pattern, we will add this texture to the stitches that are not decorated by a yarn over yet. We’ll do it in the next row.
ROW 3 – WRONG SIDE
This row is very similar to Row 1, but we’ll shift the pattern to form a lovely checkered texture.
We start by knitting the first stitch of the row through the back loop.
3.1. Knit one stitch.
3.2. Make a yarn over and slip one stitch purlwise with the yarn at the back of the work, just as we did in steps 1.1 and 1.2.
Repeat steps 3.1 and 3.2 to the last stitch of the row.
Bring the yarn to the front of the work and slip the last stitch purlwise to the right needle.
ROW 4 – RIGHT SIDE
This is another row of (almost) plain knitting.
Knit the first stitch of the row through the back loop.
4.1. Knit the stitch + yarn over duo together as one stitch.
4.2. Knit one stitch.
Repeat steps 4.1 and 4.2 to the last stitch.
Bring the yarn to the front and slip the last stitch purlwise to the right needle.
After the first pattern repeat the texture doesn’t look like much, but as we repeat these four rows over and over again, we start to see squishy brioche “bumps” placed on top of the fabric in a neat checkered pattern.
The wrong side of the fabric looks a lot like garter stitch.
When it is time to bind off stitches, do it in a right-side row (row 2 or row 4 of the pattern). Before you pass one stitch over the other as you bind off, knit all solo stitches (including the first and and last stitches of the row), and knit each duo of a stitch + a yarn over together as one stitch.
Even though checkered brioche looks a bit different when we turn the fabric upside down, the texture is very similar no matter how we look at the fabric. This makes this stitch a great option both for bottom-up sweaters and the ones worked from the top down.
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This and 31 other in-depth tutorials are part of Knitting Collection #8.
